burning down the highway skyline
by katriel1987
Summary: Mary had a sister who talked with the wind.


**title:** burning down the highway skyline

**summary:** Mary had a sister who talked with the wind.

**rating:** T for mild language, some blood, and canon character death

**characters:** Mary, OFC, mentions of John, Dean, Sam

**pairings:** Mild Mary/John

**spoilers:** "Pilot", "Home", minor for "All Hell Breaks Loose 2"

**category:** Preseries, gen, drama, AU

**word count:** 2,550

**disclaimer:** Nothing except Cass is mine. Not getting paid; I'm just playing with Kripke's awesome universe.

**dedication:** For the talented and all-around awesome **wild wolf free17.** Happy birthday, love.

**notes:** Based on a few sentences from my word-prompt fics _Whispers_ and _Echoes,_ but I have made some alterations. Title taken from The Killers' _When You Were Young._

**more notes:** I borrowed a theme from the movie _Constantine,_ but you don't need to have seen it to understand this story. Many thanks to **catdancerz** for offering some great suggestions and helping me improve this. Any remaining flaws are all mine.

- - - -

When Cass was five, she drew on the sidewalk and whispered to no one.

"Who're you talkin' to, Cass?" Mary knelt beside her little sister, getting white chalk powder all over the knees of her favorite jeans.

Cass looked up, big hazel eyes almost hidden behind her dark mop of hair. "The wind," she said, and her voice sounded funny and echoey and older than a five-year-old's. "It tells me stuff." She finished the shape she'd been working on and sat back, looking satisfied. "We's safe here, Mary. They can't get us."

Mary was nine and Very Mature, old enough to know that the wind didn't talk. (The whispers weren't real, they _weren't._) But Cass was just a baby, so Mary decided to play along. "Who's _they?"_

"You know, _them,"_ Cass said, like it was obvious. "The wind told me 'bout 'em."

Mary nodded. Cass was silly to think that the wind really talked. She'd know better when she was big like Mary.

Cass had drawn a big white circle on the sidewalk, filled with shapes that should've been too hard for her chubby little hands. Mary didn't know what the symbols meant, but they made her feel all shivery and strange. She didn't like them.

"Let's go home," she said, and scuffed out some of the shapes with her shoe as she dragged Cass away.

- - - -

_Something killed three children in their neighborhood that night._

_Nobody ever figured out exactly what._

- - - -

When Cass was twelve, she climbed a tree and refused to come down.

"Cassandra, please." Mom's voice sounded wavery like she might cry. It was cold outside, windy, and Mom pulled her robe around her like a shield.

"I can't," Cass said in that matter-of-fact way that used to make Mary mad but now just made her feel scared. Cass wasn't just being stubborn anymore. She wasn't just a strange, silly little kid who would grow out of it. She was crossing lines normal people didn't cross.

Mom sent Mary a look—_talk to her, please talk to her, she listens to you._ No she didn't, not really, but Mary moved forward anyway, hands shoved deep into her pockets.

"Why don't you come inside, Cass?" She tried to keep her voice even. "It's cold out here."

"I can't," Cass repeated. Her face looked ghost-white in the darkness, eyes round and too big. There was something wild laced through her voice, something Other that made Mary's skin prickle. Nobody else ever seemed to hear it, and Mary tried not to, because she didn't want to be crazy like Cass.

"Why not?"

"Because the tree asked me for help. It's sick and I'm fixing it." The old oak wasn't looking so good, that much was true. Mary's dad said it wouldn't last another year.

"Cass..." the words wouldn't come, words that could fix all this, make Cass normal, take the Other out of her voice and the wild out of her eyes. Mary blinked ice out of her eyelashes. Her face felt numb.

The wind picked up, blowing Cass's unruly hair across her face. It was snowing again, big sharp flakes blown almost sideways, and Cass threw her head back and laughed. _Laughed,_ like a little kid, like this was the best thing in the world, and the ground shook with her laughter. Mary stumbled, throwing out her hands for balance. Saw in a sideways glance that Mom hadn't moved, was staring at her with a concerned expression.

"Angels!" Cass cried, reaching out. "Angels, Mary!" The snowflakes started to _glow_ as they fell around her, shining like silver glitter, lighting her delighted face.

Mary sucked in a breath, glanced again at Mom, who looked worried but not stunned. _She couldn't see it._

"Not angels, Cass," Mary said, voice trembling. "It's just snow, that's all."

- - - -

_When spring came, the old oak looked healthier than it ever had before._

_No one else seemed to find that strange, so Mary didn't mention it._

- - - -

When Mary was nineteen, Cass went three days without sleeping.

Mary knelt on the floor, hands on her sister's shoulders. "Cass, please just stop," she said. Her throat hurt from repeating it. Sleep deprivation was starting to make her crazy; she was seeing phantoms in the shadows, flitting things that weren't there.

Cass shook her head. Mary's voice was hoarse, but Cass's was barely audible. She'd hardly stopped talking for the past seventy-two hours. Some of that time she'd spent singing in a language Mary had never heard, voice high and desperate.

Mary blinked. It felt like there was sand trapped under her eyelids. "You have to sleep sometime," she said. _"Please."_ This had to end. It had to.

Their parents had left her alone with Cass; Mary wasn't sure where they'd gone. Maybe just _away._ Just left her to deal with Cass, because that was all she did anymore, the only reason she was still here.

Cass's face scrunched, and silent tears started to trail down her cheeks. Mary remembered bloody palms and knees, picking up her crying baby sister and fixing everything with hugs and shushes. She couldn't fix anything, not anymore.

"The yellow-eyed man," Cass said, swiping a sleeve across her face. She stared at Mary, tears shimmering like glass in her bloodshot eyes. "I saw him."

"It was just a dream, Cass."

"No!" Cass's voice cracked. "I saw him, Mary! He's gonna come for your baby."

"_Please,"_ Mary whispered. "Please just go to sleep."

"If I don't sleep, I'll be safe. They won't find me."

"You'll die!"

"But they won't find me." Cass sounded frustrated. "You _see_ them, Mary, I know you do!"

"No, I don't," Mary said. A phantom darted at the corner of her vision.

She closed her eyes.

- - - -

_When Mary's parents came back, they brought men in white coats with them._

_That was when Mary finally started to cry._

- - - -

When Mary was twenty, she went to visit her sister in the hospital.

They had Cass in a small white room with padded walls. She was sitting in the corner, face blank, knees drawn up to her chest.

"Hey, Cass." Mary hesitated, then sat down with her back against the wall. The room was a little too cold, and the acrid smell of bleach burned her nose.

Cass stared hazily at the ceiling, pupils dilated, fingers skimming aimlessly over the fine hairs on her arm.

Mary swallowed against the ache in her throat. _I've met someone,_ she didn't say. _I think you'd like him. Would have liked him, Before._

Cass used to have opinions on everything. No more, not since they started drugging her. She didn't talk to the wind anymore. Didn't talk at all.

_You killed her,_ Mary never told the doctors, never told her parents. _Killed her like you put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger._

_I want her back like she was Before. I want her back._

They wouldn't listen anyway. They'd just tell her, _You know it's for the best._ Remind her, _You didn't see what happened to your aunt._ Mom's sister had heard things too, and she'd jumped off a building when she was seventeen. All this, the medicine, the padding, was supposed to stop it from happening again, but to Mary it just looked like a different kind of grave.

Mary twisted her hands nervously in the folds of her skirt. The chlorine-scented silence was all _wrong,_ and she couldn't stand it anymore "Look, I have to go now," she said. "But I'll come back, okay? I promise."

Cass's eyes flicked briefly to Mary's face, then back toward the ceiling. She didn't say goodbye.

When Mary walked out, she thought she felt tiny fingers curling around hers. Heard the echo of Cass's five-year-old voice: _Wait for me, Mary. Don't leave me._

She looked down. Her hands were empty.

- - - -

_Mary wondered if she was the only person who would rather Cass talk to the wind than never talk at all._

_Evidently, she was._

- - - -

When Cass was eighteen, they finally let her out.

_It's about time,_ Mary thought, because Cass had never hurt anyone.

They kept her on medication, but lowered the dosage. She started talking again—words at first, then sentences, simple like a child's. Mary remembered (would never ever forget) how Cass had helped _her_ with algebra homework, Before. Cass was smart, no matter what anyone said.

On the third day of Mary's first Spring Break since Cass came home, they went out and sat on the lawn beneath the oak tree. Cass pulled up blades of grass, cocked her head at the sky like she was listening. Mary heard the faint, garbled sound of voices and thought, _Someone must be watching TV._

"Say yes," Cass said.

Mary went still. "To what?"

Cass laughed. Mary hadn't realized how much she'd missed her little sister's dimples.

"To _him,"_ Cass said. "He'll ask you. Say yes."

Mary's parents didn't want her to. John was a mechanic, and not likely to ever be anything else; Mary was the only daughter they had left to pin their hopes on. They said, _Listen to reason, Mary; you deserve better than him. _But Cass smiled and whispered, _Say yes. I know you want to._

So Mary said yes, even though Dad shouted and Mom cried.

- - - -

_No one understood why Mary listened to the crazy things Cass told her._

_Sometimes Mary didn't either._

- - - -

When Cass was twenty, she said "It's a boy!"

Then she threw her arms around Mary and practically squeezed her lungs out.

Mary's period wasn't due for another week, but it turned out that Cass was right—about Mary being pregnant, at least. The jury was still out on the child's gender, but Mary hoped Cass was right about that too; she and John both wanted a boy first.

Cass was more excited than Mary had seen her in years, chattering nonstop about her nephew and all the things she would do with him. As the months passed, Cass seemed increasingly certain she could tell what the baby was thinking. _Don't play that; he doesn't like it. Play Zeppelin._

Mary rolled her eyes a little, but humored her. As for John, he knew his sister-in-law was strange, but Cassandra had taken a liking to him and she'd been the one who had convinced Mary to say _yes,_ so he rarely complained. It helped that he loved Zeppelin.

When Mary was five months along, Cass laid her palm against the gently rounded swell of Mary's belly. "Still a boy," she said with absolute certainty, and then smiled. "Oh, Mary. He's gonna be so beautiful."

Then her breath caught and her face changed suddenly, corners of her mouth turning down, eyes glossy with tears.

"What is it, Cass?" Mary asked. "Cass?"

"A killer," Cass said softly, gaze still fixed on that innocent little bump. "He'll be a killer."

For an instant Mary didn't move; then she slapped Cass's hand away and stood, heat rushing to her face. "Don't you say that," she said. "Don't you _ever_ say that about my baby!"

(Because John still woke up screaming sometimes, wouldn't talk about what he'd seen in Vietnam, and no child of Mary's would ever live through that.)

Mary's head began to buzz, and the air around her crackled like static electricity. "Why can't you just _stop?"_ She raised her voice at her sister for the first time in years, mind filled with remembered whispers of _that's Mary, the one with the crazy sister_ and _poor Mary, still at home taking care of Cassandra_. "Why can't you just be normal for _once_ in your life?"

Cass got to her feet, angry, cheeks flushed beneath the tears. "Because I _can't!"_ She was practically sobbing now, breathing in choppy gasps. "You don't think I've _tried?_ They won't leave me alone! You get to be normal, but I—"

She turned and bolted, slamming the door on Mary's stunned expression.

They didn't talk to each other for a week.

- - - -

_Sometimes Mary dreamed of two men with her eyes, firing guns, honing knives, splattered with blood._

_They weren't her sons. She'd make sure they weren't._

- - - -

When Mary was twenty-four, she took her sister shopping.

It wasn't until they were inside the store that Mary realized she'd left her purse in the car. She sighed; not even seven months along and her feet already ached from hauling around her belly.

"I'll get it, Mary," Cass offered. Mary hesitated, because it had been years since she'd let her sister go anywhere alone. But Cass had been better lately, almost _normal,_ no more meltdowns or bizarre comments about Mary's child.

"You'll come right back?" Mary said, ignoring the sudden chill that crawled up the back of her neck.

Cass smiled. "Of course I will."

She headed toward the car at an easy jog, looking like anybody else's twenty-year-old sister. For a moment, Mary pushed back the whispers and let herself think that everything would be all right. That _Cass_ would be all right.

Then she heard the squeal of rubber on asphalt, followed by a heavy thud.

Mary went out the door running, sore feet forgotten. She fell to her knees in a growing pool of blood, hands out, afraid to touch.

Cass was staring at the sky. She blinked slowly.

"Cass," Mary said, her voice shattering on the word. "Oh, Cass."

"His eyes," Cass said. She coughed once, and blood ran from her mouth. "Eyes were black."

"Don't talk, Cass. It's okay." There was no part of her sister that wasn't broken, but Mary put her hand on Cass's face anyway. The skin was sticky with blood, still warm but already cooling.

"Mary," Cass said. She was still staring at the sky, but her voice had broken free, crept inside Mary's bones, wild like it was always meant to be.

"Yeah, Cass?" Mary's vision wavered, colors blurring and running together.

"I don't want you to burn," Cass whispered.

Mary was opening her mouth to say _"I won't"_ when the wind hit; a sudden, sharp updraft that flung brightly-colored leaves into the sky. She ducked her head instinctively, remembered Cass's voice saying _Angels, Mary!_

When Mary raised her head, her sister was dead.

- - - -

_Mary heard Cassandra's voice on the wind sometimes, begging her to listen._

_It felt like betrayal, but she never told anyone._

- - - -

When Mary was twenty-nine, she went downstairs and saw her husband sleeping.

_Run, Mary,_ the wind whispered to her, and for the first time in her life, she listened. _Run, Mary,_ and she ran.

There was a man with yellow eyes standing over Sammy's crib.

_I saw him, Mary! He's gonna come for your baby._

"It's you," she breathed.

Her second-to-last thought before she burned was _Sammy._

Her last thought, filled with understanding and remorse for all the things she had never let herself see, was _Cassandra._

- - - -

_Trapped in the house where she'd died, Mary whispered into the wind, searching for her sister._

_She never found her._

- - - -

**(end)**


End file.
